First of all, you probably need to silence your 7th grade English teacher's voice that's quietly shouting inside your head. Following Mrs. Shipley's instructions will only take you so far.
Here's the good news: the fix might not be so difficult.
There’s a good chance your story’s hip bone is connected to the collar bone. No wonder your
story is immobile.
But when you get the bones of your story in the right place—VOILA!!—suddenly you have a functional story. It can move. It can walk. It can
fly.
When I help writers fix technically well-written manuscripts that don’t work, I look for two common problems—one predominantly for fiction and other for nonfiction:
Problem #1: Complication/Resolution Misses
When telling a story (fiction or nonfiction, short story, article, or book-length work), you’d be surprised how many writers tell a story like this:
- Identify the problem
the main characters face
- Describe everything that happens
next
- Stop when they get to the end
Big mistake.
When you do this, you can easily miss creating the perfect complication/resolution match.
If you want to tell a riveting story, you MUST begin by creating a perfect match between your complication and resolution. But it’s surprising how many ways your complication and
resolution can be slightly “off” and how profoundly it diminishes the impact of your story—even if your story is technically well-written.
Illumify's go-to resource on this topic is Jon Franklin’s book
Writing for Story. Karen Bouchard, our Master Book Coach, swears by it (she doesn't swear much, so when she does you need to pay attention!).
Franklin gives this
example:
If your character finds out in the beginning of your story that he has cancer, then finds God at the end of the story, that’s not a match. Embracing God doesn’t solve the cancer diagnosis.
He goes on to add that, if, however, the complication is that your character with cancer is terrified of dying, that’s a complication that is indeed resolved by embracing God.
You can see how easy it is to miss. Also, once you understand this principle, fixing the problem is a breeze. A slight tweak at the beginning that sets up the story to focus on your character’s fears suddenly resolves the ending.
I consider the structure of a well-planned complication and resolution (and what happens in-between) the “bones” of your story. Like I explained, you need to get this part right or all the "grammar fixing" in the world won’t
make a great story.
Problem #2: Backtracking Your Information Stepping Stones
In a nonfiction book or article, your goal is to move your reader step by step from Point A to Point Z.
Let’s say you’re writing to someone who feels overwhelmed with life. Or maybe you're writing to someone who is apathetic to a cause you’re passionate about. Or perhaps your target reader wants to build a birdhouse but doesn’t know how.
These are all examples of Point As.
Your
mission is to move your reader from Point A to Point Z, like this:
- From overwhelmed . . . to feeling hopeful and inspired
- From apathetic . . . to
caring about an important issue
- From clueless . . . to knowing exactly what steps to take to build the birdhouse of their dreams
When writing to inspire, persuade, or inform, I don’t think of structure as the bones, but rather as stepping stones. All the stones are lettered A to Z, and each represents the next step in taking your reader emotionally or cognitively from where they are when they start reading, to where you want them to be when they finish the last paragraph.
When an otherwise well-written article or manuscript isn’t working, I go through the manuscript and begin evaluating the flow. Very often I find that the writer is taking the reader from point A, to B, to C, back
to A, to D, to E, back to C, and so on.
No wonder the reader is feeling confused. They're being jerked around all over the place.
I'm a fan of clear writing. Convoluted writing pushes your reader away from the
manuscript.
At this point, I begin assembling the material into groups of similar information. Usually, I write a word or summary sentence for each group on pieces of notebook paper. Then I play around
with the order until it feels natural.
Quite often, I find leftover sheets of paper that don't fit into the order. That the detritus that doesn't belong in your manuscript.
Gotta kill your little darlings!
Now I'm ready to take my reader on a clear and meaningful journey from Point A to Point Z.
Are You A Fan of Steampunk?
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.
Congratulations to Yasmeen Salama on the release of her new steampunk novel, The Crimson
Run.
